to provide a single consistent code and user interface to the specification of
physical properties in both single-phase and multi-phase solvers. This redesign
simplifies usage and reduces code duplication in run-time selectable solver
options such as 'functionObjects' and 'fvModels'.
* physicalProperties
Single abstract base-class for all fluid and solid physical property classes.
Physical properties for a single fluid or solid within a region are now read
from the 'constant/<region>/physicalProperties' dictionary.
Physical properties for a phase fluid or solid within a region are now read
from the 'constant/<region>/physicalProperties.<phase>' dictionary.
This replaces the previous inconsistent naming convention of
'transportProperties' for incompressible solvers and
'thermophysicalProperties' for compressible solvers.
Backward-compatibility is provided by the solvers reading
'thermophysicalProperties' or 'transportProperties' if the
'physicalProperties' dictionary does not exist.
* phaseProperties
All multi-phase solvers (VoF and Euler-Euler) now read the list of phases and
interfacial models and coefficients from the
'constant/<region>/phaseProperties' dictionary.
Backward-compatibility is provided by the solvers reading
'thermophysicalProperties' or 'transportProperties' if the 'phaseProperties'
dictionary does not exist. For incompressible VoF solvers the
'transportProperties' is automatically upgraded to 'phaseProperties' and the
two 'physicalProperties.<phase>' dictionary for the phase properties.
* viscosity
Abstract base-class (interface) for all fluids.
Having a single interface for the viscosity of all types of fluids facilitated
a substantial simplification of the 'momentumTransport' library, avoiding the
need for a layer of templating and providing total consistency between
incompressible/compressible and single-phase/multi-phase laminar, RAS and LES
momentum transport models. This allows the generalised Newtonian viscosity
models to be used in the same form within laminar as well as RAS and LES
momentum transport closures in any solver. Strain-rate dependent viscosity
modelling is particularly useful with low-Reynolds number turbulence closures
for non-Newtonian fluids where the effect of bulk shear near the walls on the
viscosity is a dominant effect. Within this framework it would also be
possible to implement generalised Newtonian models dependent on turbulent as
well as mean strain-rate if suitable model formulations are available.
* visosityModel
Run-time selectable Newtonian viscosity model for incompressible fluids
providing the 'viscosity' interface for 'momentumTransport' models.
Currently a 'constant' Newtonian viscosity model is provided but the structure
supports more complex functions of time, space and fields registered to the
region database.
Strain-rate dependent non-Newtonian viscosity models have been removed from
this level and handled in a more general way within the 'momentumTransport'
library, see section 'viscosity' above.
The 'constant' viscosity model is selected in the 'physicalProperties'
dictionary by
viscosityModel constant;
which is equivalent to the previous entry in the 'transportProperties'
dictionary
transportModel Newtonian;
but backward-compatibility is provided for both the keyword and model
type.
* thermophysicalModels
To avoid propagating the unnecessary constructors from 'dictionary' into the
new 'physicalProperties' abstract base-class this entire structure has been
removed from the 'thermophysicalModels' library. The only use for this
constructor was in 'thermalBaffle' which now reads the 'physicalProperties'
dictionary from the baffle region directory which is far simpler and more
consistent and significantly reduces the amount of constructor code in the
'thermophysicalModels' library.
* compressibleInterFoam
The creation of the 'viscosity' interface for the 'momentumTransport' models
allows the complex 'twoPhaseMixtureThermo' derived from 'rhoThermo' to be
replaced with the much simpler 'compressibleTwoPhaseMixture' derived from the
'viscosity' interface, avoiding the myriad of unused thermodynamic functions
required by 'rhoThermo' to be defined for the mixture.
Same for 'compressibleMultiphaseMixture' in 'compressibleMultiphaseInterFoam'.
This is a significant improvement in code and input consistency, simplifying
maintenance and further development as well as enhancing usability.
Henry G. Weller
CFD Direct Ltd.
The FOAM file format has not changed from version 2.0 in many years and so there
is no longer a need for the 'version' entry in the FoamFile header to be
required and to reduce unnecessary clutter it is now optional, defaulting to the
current file format 2.0.
For example in the new tutorial case:
tutorials/incompressible/pimpleFoam/laminar/pitzDailyPulse
a cosine bell velocity pulse is specified at the inlet by directly defining the
code for it:
inlet
{
type uniformFixedValue;
uniformValue coded;
name pulse;
codeInclude
#{
#include "mathematicalConstants.H"
#};
code
#{
return vector
(
0.5*(1 - cos(constant::mathematical::twoPi*min(x/0.3, 1))),
0,
0
);
#};
}
which is then compiled automatically and linked into the running pimpleFoam
dynamically and executed to set the inlet velocity.
The pitzDaily case uses a lot of mesh grading close to walls and the shear layer.
Prior to v2.4, blockMesh only permitted grading in one direction within a single block,
so the pitzDaily mesh comprised of 13 blocks to accommodate the complex grading pattern.
blockMesh has multi-grading that allows users to divide a block in a given direction and
apply different grading within each division. The mesh generated with blockMesh using
13 blocks has been replaced with a mesh of 5 blocks that use multi-grading. The new
blockMeshDict configuration produces a mesh very similar to the original 13-block mesh.
using a run-time selectable preconditioner
References:
Van der Vorst, H. A. (1992).
Bi-CGSTAB: A fast and smoothly converging variant of Bi-CG
for the solution of nonsymmetric linear systems.
SIAM Journal on scientific and Statistical Computing, 13(2), 631-644.
Barrett, R., Berry, M. W., Chan, T. F., Demmel, J., Donato, J.,
Dongarra, J., Eijkhout, V., Pozo, R., Romine, C. & Van der Vorst, H.
(1994).
Templates for the solution of linear systems:
building blocks for iterative methods
(Vol. 43). Siam.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biconjugate_gradient_stabilized_method
Tests have shown that PBiCGStab with the DILU preconditioner is more
robust, reliable and shows faster convergence (~2x) than PBiCG with
DILU, in particular in parallel where PBiCG occasionally diverges.
This remarkable improvement over PBiCG prompted the update of all
tutorial cases currently using PBiCG to use PBiCGStab instead. If any
issues arise with this update please report on Mantis: http://bugs.openfoam.org
so that the specification of the name and dimensions are optional in property dictionaries.
Update tutorials so that the name of the dimensionedScalar property is
no longer duplicated but optional dimensions are still provided and are
checked on read.
For multi-region cases the default location of blockMeshDict is now system/<region name>
If the blockMeshDict is not found in system then the constant directory
is also checked providing backward-compatibility
